Do you want to be fully creative? To not only have wild ideas, but to actually create and bring remarkable things to life?

There are four distinct roles to be performed for the creative process to be as effective as possible. Each one requires that you play different characters, with different mindsets and skills.

The roles are: Explorer, Artist, Judge and Warrior.

Learn how they help unleash your creativity and how to master the skills each one requires.

1. The Explorer

Ideas do not come out of the blue. In order to build them you first need to gather the raw materials: facts, concepts, experiences, knowledge, feelings — that’s what ideas are made of. To get all of that, you need an attitude of ongoing curiosity and exploration.

The Explorer is always in search of new things. He is relentlessly curious and never limits himself to a particular area of experience and knowledge. To have ideas is to connect dots. First and foremost you need lots of dots to connect — you need fuel for the formation of new ideas.

How to Develop Your Explorer

• Be curious and alert. Poke around in unknown areas. Be like a child, by paying attention to the world and being receptive to it. Rediscover the fun in finding things out.

• Seek out as many inputs as possible. Do not limit yourself to the tried and true. Read different books and see different movies from the ones you like. Also, don’t mind going after information “you’ll never use”. Seek many different areas of knowledge.

• Talk to a lot of different people. Get to know many different perspectives. Talk to strangers. Don’t limit yourself to expert advice.

2. The Artist

The artist has ideas. He takes the raw materials from the Explorer and combines them in novel ways.

When people say someone’s “creative”, they’re usually referring to the Artist. The Artist has ideas mostly by trying new things. He applies his imagination by rearranging, turning things upside down, stirring things up. He pursues different approaches and finds unexpected connections. He’s playful; he doesn’t care about what people expect from him.

How to Develop Your Artist

• Flex your idea muscles. Write down new ideas as they come to you; it stimulates your brain to generate more and more ideas. Also, use idea-generation tools deliberately: Lists of 100, Idea Quota and SCAMPER just to name a few.

• Play! We all know it: the most efficient way to have new ideas is by having fun. Don’t always take problems too seriously. Entertain yourself and keep your brain fresh and ready.

• Use your imagination. Leave practicality aside; don’t be afraid to let your imagination run wild and visualize new possibilities. Dare to ask ‘what if’ and watch new realities unfold.

3. The Judge

The Judge is all about “getting real”. His job is to analyze the Artist’s wild ideas and assess if they’re practical — in the real world.

The judge questions assumptions; he compares and analyzes. He checks how feasible ideas are. No matter how much the Artist loves an idea, the Judge looks for counterarguments, checks evidence, and makes hard decisions. Combining gut feeling and analytical tools, the judge must only let through feasible ideas.

The Judge gets a bad reputation — but only because people usually invoke him too early. Killing an idea before the Artist can play with it is a pity; killing it later is oftentimes a necessity.

How to Develop Your Judge

• Develop critical thinking. Check your assumptions, experimenting with hypotheses, analyzing results and drawing conclusions. Master decision making.

• Be aware of thinking traps. Our minds deceive us. Be always aware and vigilant of your own biases. There are more ways than you can imagine that your thinking can go wrong. Really.

• Be real. Will the idea give you the return you want? Do you have the resources to make it happen? Are you willing to put the effort to make it happen? Be practical and down-to-earth.

4. The Warrior

As soon as you have an idea ready to be executed you’ll realize the world isn’t set up to accommodate every new idea that comes along. The enemies can be external: competition may be fierce, or people may just don’t “get” your beautiful ideas. Even harder than those, there are more than enough enemies already within you: think resistance, excuses and fear of failure.

The Warrior’s job is to make ideas happen. For that, you’ll need not only a strategy and plan of action but to put in the hours — fight the daily fight.

That means remaining productive, developing the resilience and courage to overcome obstacles and, of course, being able to sell your ideas — whatever’s necessary to materialize them.

How to Develop Your Warrior

• Overcome resistance. When you create something new, resistance inevitably creeps in. You need to find ways of overcoming procrastination and staying productive day in, day out.

• Be courageous. In order to make things happen, you’ll need to let go of self-doubt and conquer fear of failure.

• Market and sell your idea. Are you the only one who thinks your idea is great? Can you convince others of the merits of your idea? If you can’t sell your idea, it won’t get far.

Awareness and Timing are Critical Too

In reality, we all know the path to creativity is not that sequential — explorer-to-artist-to-judge-to-warrior. Usually, there’s a lot of switching back and forth between roles: The Judge may return an idea to the Artist for further development; the Artist may want more data from the Explorer to develop a certain idea, and so on.

This is fine. The main thing is to be aware of which role you’re performing at different points in time. We often get stuck in the Explorer role for too long. Or we may jump the gun and summon our Judge while our Artist is still working his magic. There are so many ways to spend too much or too little time in each role, or to overlap ineffectively.

The lesson is: make sure not only to develop the skill set for each role, but also to play each one at the appropriate time. Be aware of which phase of the creative process you’re in and what you’re trying to accomplish. All roles are equally important: make sure they’re playing well with each other.

Want to Know More? Here’s a Recommendation

These concepts above are not new. The idea of the four creativity roles comes from Roger Von Oech’s classic work on creativity A Whack on the Side of the Head, as well as the Creative Whack Pack (which is a deck of cards where each of the four roles is a suit — very fun, do check it out too).

I have had this book for ages but only lately have been applying its principles and becoming more conscious of the steps of the creative process. There’s a myth that creativity needs to be wild and unplanned, that one cannot be trained to be creative. I’m increasingly convinced that that is not true and I will expand on this topic as I explore more. In the meantime, A Whack on the Side of the Head and Creative Whack Pack are two truly excellent resources I recommend for those interested in becoming more creative.

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This is an article by guest writer Mark Foo, author of The 77 Traits of Highly Successful People.

There’s nothing wrong with a little bit of chaos in your life. As Albert Einstein once stated, “Three rules of work: out of clutter find simplicity, from discord find harmony, in the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.”

Unexpected challenges are what make us stronger, so don’t avoid them. Keep in mind the following 50 tips and you’ll be able to streamline your life and get back on track in the New Year.

1. Recycle old papers that are filling drawers in your house. If you’re anything like me, you have drawers overflowing with old receipts, junk mail, records, and notes to myself. Get rid of all of this. Invest in a paper shredder to reduce clutter and maintain privacy.
2. Mentally prepare yourself for change by visualizing your ideal self. Who do you admire the most? How do you envision yourself in the future? Who do you want to be? Visualize yourself to be that person.
3. Realize that unexpected events can be a good thing. As the Dalai Lama once said, “Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.”
4. Ask people you admire how they got where they are today. I’ve always admired my grandfather. Learning more about how he started up his business, dealt with difficulty throughout his life, and maintained grace throughout it all has helped me in my personal endeavors.
5. Cut back on alcohol, cigarettes and other vices. These can be crutches that cloud judgment. The money saved by not purchasing or cutting back on this type of material can then be put into something rewarding such as a vacation.
6. Remove elements of negativity from your life, be they people or a job you don’t want to do. If you have friends who are bringing you down, there’s no need to keep hanging out with them out of obligation. Cut your ties and cut your losses.
7. Start each day with a clear to-do list along with your cup of morning coffee. Knowing what you need to do in the day ahead helps keep you on track.
8. Clean your house from top to bottom and throw away anything outdated. Not only receipts, as mentioned above, but any old junk that should be donated to charity or sold in a garage sale.
9. Institute a clear filing system for your personal records. Investing in a simple filing cabinet and folders with labels is something you don’t need a personal secretary for and makes your life much easier when you are looking for a specific item.
10. Do your grocery shopping for the week on the day it’s most convenient. Make a list, budget, and get only what you need to save time and money.
11. Take a career test that will help you identify your strengths. If you are unhappy with your career but don’t even know where to begin in the process of moving on, this can be a good way to identify strengths and new possibilities.
12. Meet with a professional counselor if there are issues you need to discuss. Many people are struggling with dead weight from the past or emotional baggage that is holding them back. Deal with them and move on with professional assistance.
13. Go through cabinets and throw out expired medications or food items. The last time I did this, I found everything from 3-year-old curry powder to 5-year-old aspirin. Throw them out.
14. Make a clear diet plan with an emphasis on whole grains, fruits and vegetables. A healthy diet plan has a tremendous effect on your overall energy levels.
15. Add vitamin pills to your daily diet. Vitamin supplements can help reduce the possibility of cancer and osteoporosis, among other disorders.
16. Work out a clear exercise plan with an activity that you enjoy such as dancing or biking. My girlfriend loves yoga, and I am a soccer enthusiast. As long as it’s active, it counts.
17. Set appointments you’ve been putting off. It’s easy to put off going to the doctor or dentist until we are sick, but preventive care is extremely important in overall health levels.
18. Take up a mental exercise. Crossword puzzles, Sudoku, or other word games along these lines are more than just a good way to pass time. They have been shown in studies to help improve overall mental capabilities.
19. Publish your own book. This is easier than ever before with Internet publishing. You can get your ideas out there and start making money from them. I’ve published my own eBook, The 77 Traits of Highly Successful People, check it out.
20. Make a reading list and join a book club. Most people state that they want to read more, but without an actual plan you may not make the time to do this. Joining a book club not only serves as a social activity but also keeps you up to date with your own reading list.
21. Spend time with yourself each day. Susan Taylor states that “spending quiet time alone gives your mind an opportunity to renew itself and create order.”
22. Practice breathing exercises or meditation. Stress can have an overarching effect on our overall productivity levels. When stressed, I personally forget to breathe at times. Take the time to take deep breaths and improve oxygen flow to the brain.
23. Speak and act with honesty. Are you able to stand by what you do and say? If not, it may be time to reexamine your own words and learn to articulate your thoughts in an open, honest way. This helps eliminate mistakes down the road.
24. Learn from past mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes. Usually, we make a lot of them during our lifetime. As long as they aren’t repeated too many times, and are looked at as a learning experience, they can in fact be a good thing in the long run.
25. Volunteer to help others in your community. Helping others is a rewarding way to get your own life together.
26. Take up a new language or hobby.
27. Read inspirational biographies. For new ideas, find out how others got their lives in order.
28. Talk to a stranger. Unplanned conversations can be surprisingly inspiring.
29. Reconnect with friends and relatives who live far away. Call those people you miss but keep putting off calling. With the Internet and Skype at your disposal, even an online chat can help you reconnect.
30. Change your toothbrush. It can be a hotbed of bacteria.
31. Take more naps. Sleep is often sadly underrated in its ability to boost energy, mood, and keep reaction times sharp.
32. Drink at least 6 cups of water per day. Staying hydrated helps keep energy levels up.
33. Organize your photo collection. Get both digital files and physical printouts in albums. If you’re anything like my family, your photographs could be sadly sitting tucked away in shoeboxes in the closet, taking up space.
34. Take an interest in art in your community. Visiting galleries can help introduce you to the artists in your community and help stimulate thinking.
35. Join a hobbyist club. My friend decided to learn more about building model airplanes and was so deeply into it that he recently obtained his commercial pilot’s license. You never know where a simple hobby can lead you in life.
36. Keep a calendar with commitments. Having a visual reminder in front of you can be extremely helpful. We are all different types of learners.
37. Don’t put off difficult conversations. Deal with problems directly and immediately. This will result in a much lower level of anxiety for all involved.
38. Make a list of priorities and do what makes you happy. If you have lost touch with your own priorities lately, it can be beneficial to take the time to sit and think about what actually makes you happy. Work toward achieving this as much as possible.
39. Spend more time outdoors. Nature has an ability to help soothe a troubled mind and clear your thoughts. Taking a walk in the woods or climbing a mountain, at any level of difficulty, gives a sense of pride and accomplishment.
40. Attend lectures. These could be science lectures or other types, but it’s helpful to keep up-to-date on what’s going on in the world and plan accordingly. Keeping the mind active helps you in all aspects of your daily life.
41. Take the time to stretch muscles. Get a massage to improve muscle tone and circulation, then use this new energy and apply it to your work routine.
42. Make laughter a priority. Hang out with some of your most entertaining friends for a good laugh, or simply sit back with some favorite old comedies. Laughter counts as exercise and has been shown to expand your life span.
43. Clear some time each day to do nothing. As a child, I remember that we had “free time” scheduled into our school activities every day. This could be used for reading, drawing, or simply staring into space if that’s what we felt like doing. What a novel idea, and one that keeps the brain at ease.
44. Schedule a much-needed vacation.
45. Learn new tips for entertaining. You don’t have to be Martha Stewart to throw a great dinner party, and learning how to be a host or hostess with minimal effort can give a big boost to your confidence levels.
46. Throw out old clothing that doesn’t fit. Too many of us are squeezing into outdated clothes that are doing us no favors. Look and feel your best with clothes that are tailored to fit.
47. Live in the present, not the past. The past is over. Move on and enjoy every moment as it occurs. Take stock of what needs to be accomplished and move forward with this information.
48. Learn from past mistakes and move forward with your life. Get your life in order by looking forward, not back.
49. Get your car checked up. You go to the doctor to have your body checked up. Don’t wait until it is too late to perform maintenance on your car. I once got stuck on a road trip to Ipoh (Malaysia) as a result of this oversight, and it wasn’t pleasant.
50. Budget for possible home repairs. Set aside some money in the proverbial cookie jar to keep home maintenance within the realm of possibility in this coming year.

Do you have a tip to help us get our lives in order? Please share in the comment section below!

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You’re facing a big challenge at work and can’t come up with any innovative ideas. Maybe your business is flagging or a particular area in your personal life has stalled. Either way, you could really use fresh new ideas to spice things up.

In situations like these it’s tempting to go seek help from the experts. After all, someone much more knowledgeable should be the best source of ideas, right?

Well, maybe not.

The Problem with Experts

Experts need to specialize. They need to draw boundaries around their subjects so they can narrow their focus and be as effective as possible in their fields.

This ‘compartmentalization in thinking’ is immensely useful in speeding up problem solving. It also means experts usually fall short in stretching their thinking beyond their areas of expertise, and as such fail to see the big picture.

Michael Michalko puts it well in his book Thinkertoys: “It’s like brushing one tooth. You get to know that one tooth extremely well, but you lose the rest of them in the process.”

But it gets worse: experts may not only miss obvious solutions, but they may actually cause harm, forcing inadequate solutions that fall within their area of expertise. “To the man who only has a hammer, everything he encounters begins to look like a nail”, psychologist Abraham Maslow wisely remarked.

Although experts are often useful, when it comes to innovation you may actually be better off without them.

An Alternative: Embrace The Nonexperts Around You

The alternative to talking to experts is — drum roll — talking to nonexperts, of course.

Regular people around you. Your soccer buddies. The garbage collector. Uncle Bob. It doesn’t matter who: anyone outside your field, anyone who’s strange to the problem — anyone who “doesn’t know the rules” will do.

Regular people — nonexperts — don’t have enough experience to know where to draw boundaries: they’re unaware of limitations or “how things are supposed to work”. In their naïveté, they’ll miss many constraints and assumptions you take for granted — which is exactly the point. These are the people who will most likely spark fresh new ideas for you. They can genuinely think outside the box: for them, there’s no box.

We have a tendency to always go after more specialized people for getting help in our problems — and that works in many cases. But for creative endeavors, perhaps all you need is someone who knows less.

The great news is that there is no shortage of nonexperts around you. Everyone is a nonexpert at most things. All you need is to know how to tap into their non-expertise in the area you need help. Here are 3 tips to help.

1. Meet Different Kinds of People — Lots of Them!

To build a solid network of idea-generating friends, first and foremost you need to strive for diversity.

It doesn’t matter if you have 500 peers to draw ideas from if everybody else’s mind is the same: it’s not a matter of how many people you know, it’s how many kinds.

Resist the temptation to seek advice only from people who think alike: it’s comfortable, I know, but it hinders you from fully expanding your mind. Go out and mix with people with diverse interests for a change!

Getting in touch with many different perspectives is guaranteed to keep your creative juices flowing (and as a bonus you become a much more interesting person in the process!).

Find out how different people would tackle your problem. How would a nurse do it? A 5-year-old child? An economist? Your mom?

Never miss the opportunity to have casual conversations with strangers. The butcher, the old lady ahead of you in the line and the ice cream vendor are all sources of potentially useful ideas. Even if you don’t discuss your particular problem directly (which of course may not always be a sensible thing to do), discovering different perspectives about random life subjects is useful in itself to spark new ideas.

2. Seek Out Idea-Oriented People

Having an abundant circle of relationships always comes first, but after striving for quantity, you now need to make sure you have quality relationships too!

There’s a certain breed of people that you’ll always benefit from having around: it’s the kind of thinkers that spark your imagination whenever you talk to them. You know who they are:

• They love original ideas and use them in their businesses and lives.
• They are relentlessly curious and pay attention to the world around them.
• They may be naïve about your business, but are not stupid or ignorant of the things that matter.
• They have great wits and challenge the absurdity in things.

Make a list of people who you know have those traits and arrange to spend more time with them. Never let too much time pass without staying in touch with them. Discuss your challenges and ask for ideas — or just engage in idle chatting (which also sparks a torrent of ideas in itself).

Having such vibrant people around you is invaluable for your creativity and too fun to miss out.

3. Engage in “Fool Mode” (Assume Everybody’s a Genius)

This is a fun technique I use sometimes. I like to call it “Fool Mode”.

When I’m in “fool mode”, everybody knows the solutions to my problems. Everybody is a genius — except me. In fact, not only do they know the solution I’m looking for, but they may be already giving it away — the only caveat being they’re talking in riddles — so it’s my job to figure it out!

Adopting the fool’s mindset works great because it checks our tendency to kill ideas before giving them at least some thought.

Think about this: When someone presents us an idea we can’t see the use for, our tendency is to dismiss it immediately, labeling it a ’stupid idea’. Now what if the other person were a well-known genius — like, say, Einstein? Would you not consider paying a little more attention to what he would have to say? Of course you would! It’s in that thinking — trying to force relationships between seemingly unrelated ideas — that your breakthrough idea may lie.

Being in “fool mode” is also fun and teaches important lessons: You open your mind to the world. You temporarily suspend judgment and let go of any intellectual arrogance you may have. You assume everybody has something to contribute — and what you come to realize, of course, is that they do.

In Closing

You shouldn’t expect random people to actually solve a complex problem they don’t know about. But, if you have an open mind and are willing to listen, they can spark off a torrent of fresh new ideas, which may be just enough for you to solve the problem yourself.

So, by all means don’t dismiss experts. They have more experience and can often help you. But don’t forget that the great innovative ideas are usually elsewhere. The solution you’re looking for may be with your neighbor or with weird uncle Bob — you just need to go get it.

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Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. Even if you are not familiar with its name, I’m sure you’ve fallen prey to Parkinson’s Law countless times… what can we do to escape it?

Do You Recognize These Symptoms?

We all know the drill: when we have too much time to complete a task, we tend to slack off until the task becomes urgent. Then, when meeting the deadline gets nigh impossible, we become super-productive and miraculously pull it off — getting the job done just in time.

The quintessential example of Parkinson’s Law in action is school assignments: even with a full month to complete an assignment, most people work very unproductively (if at all) until the last few days — when they pull one or two all-nighters and manage to get it done right at the last minute.

If you are like one of those students, you know that ‘working’ on the assignment filled up the whole time available — even if only psychologically — despite the fact that you spent little time in actual, productive work. Had you invested this short amount of time right after the assignment was handed to you, you would have completed it much sooner and could have spent the remaining time much more joyfully (either truly resting or working more productively on other stuff).

Does that mean we’re doomed to work at our peak only when we’re faced with looming deadlines? How can we get rid of this unproductive behavior and beat Parkinson’s Law? It turns out there are a few things you can do. Read on.

6 Surefire Ways to Beat Parkinson’s Law

1. Break Down Your Tasks and Deadlines

Parkinson’s Law always strikes the hardest when you have enormous tasks with far-away deadlines. The best way to fix this is, of course, breaking those big, monolithic tasks into many smaller, bite-sized tasks, along with several intermediate deadlines to complete them.

In addition to showing how you are progressing, frequent, achievable deadlines create a mild sense of urgency during the whole duration of your work, keeping you naturally engaged and focused on what needs to be done.

This method works great indeed, but note that you still need to take those intermediate deadlines seriously — which is not always easy!

2. Know What ‘Done’ Means

It’s not always easy to know for sure when a task is finished. The more of a perfectionist you are, the most likely you’re a victim of Parkinson’s Law: there’s always one more little thing to add, one little refinement to be made, isn’t there?

Sure, I am all for aiming for greater quality: the hard part is knowing where to draw the line so we don’t spend a lot of time overdoing it.

If you suffer from this same problem, one thing that helps a lot is to precisely define the output of your tasks. The trick is to be as specific as you can about them — and then simply stop when you complete them.

For example, ‘write white paper draft’ allows too much room for interpretation by your inner perfectionist. ‘Write a 1000-word unedited stream-of-consciousness-style text’ works much better, doesn’t it? Being specific upfront helps keep our perfectionism in check.

3. Set Clear Boundaries

Most of the time, Parkinson’s Law kicks in when we’re doing too much stuff at the same time: our days become a jumble of tasks when hardly any ever gets completely finished. And, with the huge amount of distractions that tend to creep in, it only gets worse.

To avoid Parkinson’s Law’s effects and finish tasks sooner, we must work on them one at a time, focused and with as few distractions as possible.

The best way I know to do that is by corralling your tasks using time boxes. Get a countdown timer and set a time limit to work on them — a contiguous block without distractions to finish or at least make progress on those tasks.

Another great way of setting boundaries is by clearly separating between work and leisure. If you restrict the time available for work (and honor it, of course), you’ll learn to fit all your work into these boundaries. My favorite technique to keep work boundaries well-defined is the time budget (where you define how much time you spend on each area of your life).

4. Challenge Yourself

When you have a tight time limit or deadline, it forces your brain to figure out ways to get it done in the time available.

So, it’s time to stop adding hidden “safety buffers” when you estimate and allocate time for your tasks: if you pad your estimates, they will be wasted as a result of Parkinson’s Law kicking in.

What works here instead is to set challenging deadlines for yourself. Not too challenging — mildly challenging, I’d say. The trick here is that they must still be believable — otherwise you’ll just disregard them.

Take those time boxes you set for yourself (in item #3 above) and now shrink them! Can you do the same task 10% faster? Maybe 20%? A litttle more, perhaps? As soon as you set an expectation — an estimate for the duration of a task — the estimate becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. The task will take the expected time, so take advantage of that!

The good thing about regularly challenging yourself that way is that you’ll improve your estimation skills very quickly, in addition to having fun finding creative ways to win these self-imposed challenges. If you practice (and your tasks are well-defined and small enough), it becomes increasingly easier to effectively set challenges for yourself.

5. Create Incentives to Finish Early

One reason Parkinson’s Law is so prevalent — especially in corporations — is that people rarely have the right incentives to finish early:

• —”Finished already? Here’s more work for you.”
• —”You’re fast! Guess we can bring the deadline forward next time!”

Even without pointy-haired bosses around, sticking to the current task as long as possible is often desirable, as it can act as a security blanket: maybe you’re avoiding your next task because it is too daunting, for example.

So if you finish early, give yourself mini-rewards: take a quick break, browse the web, go for a walk — do whatever takes your fancy — and enjoy the feeling of having deserved it. The key here is to associate rewards with results, not with time spent — so don’t fool yourself.

Of course, incentives for finishing early only work if the task is well-defined (i.e., you know exactly what ‘done’ means), otherwise most of us will just cheat (by doing a sloppy or incomplete job) in order to get the reward sooner.

6. Know What’s Next

Lastly, something that happens too often is hanging on too long to a task solely because we don’t know exactly what to do next.

Most of the time, the cognitive effort in planning tasks is much higher than that required to actually carry them out. That means that if we don’t have anything ready to be acted on, we may not have the required energy to stop, plan on-the-fly, and then get back to work. The easy way out is to stick to the current task for as long as we safely can.

One thing that I always strive to do is separate planning from doing, and make sure to always have a few next actions in the pipeline so you can keep the momentum going and avoid having to stop to reassess what you should be doing.

Over to You

Are you a victim of Parkinson’s Law? What works best for you in beating it? Share in the comments!

…and, while we’re still at it, writing this article reminded me of an oldie (but goodie) short video I enjoy. It’s not exactly about Parkinson’s Law, but it’s somewhat related and always makes me chuckle…

• Credit for intro photo: Robbert van der Steeg.

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Here are six principles I strive to live by. This is my own “personal productivity manifesto”: it summarizes what works for me about personal productivity.

Whenever I follow these guidelines, I am at my very best, feeling productive and joyful. If I feel that I am doing things outside these guidelines, I know I can refer to them and quickly get back on track.

Since these principles work so well for me, I figured they might work for you, too. Here they are:

Principle 6: Devote Time

No matter how capable or gifted we may be, it’s an illusion to think we can do it all. As my favorite productivity adage goes, we can do anything, but not everything. At every moment, we’re presented with infinite possibilities — we really could be doing anything! But freedom to do whatever we set our sights on comes at a price, and the price is that we need to constantly make choices about what really matters to us.

These choices, at the most fundamental level, always boil down to how we allocate and spend our time. The value of our achievements is primarily determined by what we consistently invest our time in. We need to be aware of that every day, diligently investing the time in what matters and having the courage to let the unimportant stuff go.

How to Apply this Principle

• Use a time budget. In a time budget you define shares of time for the areas or goals you care about. It’s just like a money budget, but for time: it guarantees that you don’t overspend on things that don’t matter, so you can make the most out of the things that do.
  To learn more about setting up a time budget, check out Time Budget: An Easy Way to Avoid Prioritization Dilemmas and Keep Your Life Balanced.

Principle 5: Focus Your Attention

If the previous principle was about allocating time for the things that matter, this one is about how well you’re able to spend that time.

Very often it seems we just can’t concentrate, even though we know what we should be doing, right? Resistance, procrastination, allowing ourselves to get sidetracked by distractions: these are formidable obstacles even for the most resolute people. Developing a strategy for overcoming resistance and dealing with distractions, then, is essential for maximum productivity.

How to Apply this Principle

• Use time boxing. Time boxing is a technique I use every day to overcome procrastination, conquer perfectionism and maximize overall efficiency. The concept is really simple: delimit blocks of time to work on tasks. But don’t let the simplicity of the concept deceive you: you really got to try it to see how effective it is in overcoming resistance, focusing your attention and actually doing what needs to get done.
  To learn more about time boxing, check out 15 Time Boxing Strategies to Get Things Done.

Principle 4: Honor Thy Commitments

Personal productivity is not about cramming as much stuff as we possibly can in our days. Here is a situation that sometimes happens to me, and I am sure it must have happened to you too: in a given day we write down a gazillion tasks to do, cross a lot of them off but, at the end of the day, still feel anxious about the tasks we didn’t do. Why is that?

The feeling of being productive comes not from the quantity of tasks we do, but from honoring the commitments we set for ourselves. Doing what we said we would do is what we should primarily strive for. Tasks that keep being left undone in our to do lists are broken promises to ourselves, and are a sure recipe for frustration: no matter how much we do in our days, we’ll always look at them and feel bad about ourselves.

Before trying to get more stuff done, make sure you honor your current promises (to yourself and to others): Be clear about them, drop those that you know you won’t be able to honor and then ensure that you really complete the ones that remain.

How to Apply this Principle

• Use will-do lists. ‘Will do’ lists replace a bunch of intentions (the traditional to do’s) with a small set of commitments. It’s not only much shorter than a to-do list, but also doesn’t grow as your day progresses — and you feel just terrific when you cross off 100% of it day after day.
  To learn more about ‘will do’ lists, check out Overwhelmed by Your To-Do List? Go With a ‘Will-Do’ List Instead.

Principle 3: Develop a Sustainable Pace

We need to strike a balance between work and play — between engagement and rest, between creation and recreation. In the productivity game we should take our leisure time as seriously as our work time. Even if we feel energetic and motivated to work long hours, the most effective long-term strategy is to hold ourselves back when feeling too enthusiastic and follow a sustainable pace instead.

Also, defining clear boundaries between work and rest is very important: “Work when you’re working, rest when you’re resting”, I often say. Whenever I forget this, I end up in a very ineffective ‘not-quite-working/not-quite-resting’ zombie-like state.

How to Apply this Principle

The two tools I use for the previous principles also work wonders here:

• Will-do lists. As soon as I’m done with the will-do list for the day, I’m done: I must resist the urge to work longer. I admit that sometimes — especially when I’m feeling highly energetic — I still stretch and go “get the most out of the day”. However, I always regret it the day after, as I can’t sustain the pace for too long and end up much worse than if I had just stopped working at the right time instead.

• Time boxes. also help keep work activities together. That helps a lot in making the boundaries between work and recreation very clear.

Principle 2: Keep Moving On

More important than setting big goals is to just keep going. I know this goes against most of the “set bold goals for yourself” advice you see everywhere, but it’s what works for me. Going after a “big vision” is something that always felt awkward, and it always made me more anxious than it helped.

Now, what does work for me is to constantly think about how to improve my life and define little steps to make it happen. Think continuous improvement. Take small steps and see how things change. Experiment. Sure, it’s perfectly fine to have a general direction, but don’t get too obsessed about it: circumstances will change — you will change. It’s in each step that you learn and adjust your direction.

How to Apply this Principle

• Daily and Weekly Reviews. Assess your projects and tasks every day and make sure that you define next steps for all your projects. Make them small, but ensure you make progress every single day. Forget New Year’s Resolutions. Plan, review and adjust your steps every day and every week.

• Ask “How can I take a step so small that it is impossible to fail?” This is one of my favorite questions ever (I got it from the book One Small Step Can Change Your Life — summary here). I ask it every single day when reviewing my projects and task lists. It melts resistance away and, when asked frequently, keeps you on track and energetic to keep going.

Principle 1: Feel Good. Now.

“Being productive” only makes sense if you’re enjoying yourself as you work on the stuff that’s relevant. If you’re not, none of the things we discussed here really matters. Personal productivity is a state of mind: a feeling that you’re doing what you believe is important and that you’re happy about it — not that you’re making sacrifices day in, day out.

For me, a good rule of thumb is that we should feel tired at the end of the day. Yes, tired, but in a good way: that’s very different from feeling spent or drained: it’s feeling that we poured our energy into the stuff we care the most. The feeling that our energy was put to good use. Going to sleep looking forward to the next day is, in my opinion, the ultimate measure of personal productivity.

How to Apply this Principle

• Take a one-minute self-assessment at the end of the day. How was your day? Did you invest your time and energy doing what really matters? Forget for a minute about your goals, focus on your journey. After all, if you’re only making sacrifices and not enjoying your days, what’s the point of being productive?

What about You?

What do you think of these principles? Anything missing? Do you have your own productivity principles? Please share in the comments! I’m eager to know about what works for you!

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• Time Budget: An Easy Way to Avoid Prioritization Dilemmas and Keep Your Life Balanced
• Overwhelmed by Your To-Do List? Go With a ‘Will-Do’ List Instead.
• Lifehacks vs. Lifestyle Design (And the Winner Is…)
• Do It Tomorrow: An Interview with Mark Forster
• Beat Parkinson’s Law and Supercharge Your Productivity
• 15 Time Boxing Strategies to Get Things Done
• 6 Productivity Tips to a Stress-Free Life
• 50 Ways to Get Your Life in Order

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Do you ever have the impression that no one takes your ideas seriously? Why is it so difficult to get our great ideas across while urban legends and conspiracy theories circulate so effortlessly?

It turns out these ideas and stories — the ones that spread like wildfire — all share some identical common principles. That means we can learn and apply these principles to make our own ideas more appealing and successful.

In this posting, Litemind reader Johan Dhaeseleer shares with us a mind map summary of the 2007 bestseller Made to Stick. The book presents the common traits of successful ideas, turning them into a simple formula we can use to make our own ideas stick.

From Great Ideas to Sticky Ideas

What’s the story with ’sticky ideas’? According to the authors, Chip and Dan Heath, it means that “your ideas are understood and remembered, and have a lasting impact — they change your audience’s opinions or behavior”.

If you want people to do something — to actually use — your ideas, it doesn’t matter how great those ideas are: if you can’t get them across effectively, nobody will care about them. As obvious as it is, this is an error creative people make all the time: we care too much about developing our ideas and too little about communicating them effectively.

A Checklist for Successful Ideas

By analyzing numerous case studies, Chip and Dan show us the underlying principles that lead to ’sticky’ ideas, noting that the more these principles are expressed in an idea, the more likely it is to become successful.

The formula is conveniently summarized by the acronym SUCCES, meaning:

• Simple: What’s the essential core of the idea?
• Unexpected: Does the idea grab people’s attention?
• Concrete: Is the idea clear? Isn’t it abstract?
• Credible: Will people believe the idea?
• Emotion: Will people care about the idea?
• Story: Does the idea inspire people? Will they act on it?

A Quick Example

To understand how the formula works, let’s take a look at one of the case studies in the book: You do know Jared, the 425-pound fast-food dieter, don’t you?

If you live in the US you certainly know about him. For those who don’t, Jared is the central character in one of the most successful ad campaigns of the decade, created for fast-food chain Subway. The ad campaign is about how Jared shed almost 100 pounds (45 kg) in just 3 months by eating mostly at Subway. (You can check the original ad here).

So, how did the ‘Jared’ ad campaign become so immensely successful? Here’s how it fits in Made to Stick’s SUCCES formula:

• Simple: Eat sandwiches and lose weight.
• Unexpected: A guy lost a lot of weight by eating fast food!
• Concrete: He shows his oversized pants, mentions specific sandwiches.
• Credible: We can see how a guy who used to wear 60-inch pants and XXXXXXL shirts is now slender.
• Emotional: We care more about an individual — Jared — than about a faceless person in a crowd.
• Story: The protagonist overcomes big odds to triumph. He inspires the rest of us to do the same.

If you think about this formula, you’ll see that you can use it to make just about any idea more appealing.

Book Summary

Find below the summary of Made to Stick in mind map format.

The mind map is courtesy of Litemind reader Johan DHaeseleer, and is Johan’s second contribution to our growing gallery. (Make sure you check his previous mind map on Brain Rules — another truly amazing book.)

Get the mind map for Made to Stick:

• Download in MindManager format
  (756 kb, requires MindManager).
• Download in XMind format
  (758 kb, requires free XMind).

A Short Digression on Mind Map Formats: Introducing XMind

A while ago, another amazing Litemind reader, Bruno Unna (round of applause, please), recommended the XMind mind mapping application. After playing with it for a while, I was impressed.

XMind is free, open-source, multi-platform, portable and much easier to use than Freemind (not to mention that the resulting mind maps are much more elegant!)

Although my primary mind mapping application of choice continues to be MindManager, XMind now comes as a close second.

I always like to offer open, platform-independent mind maps to readers — that’s why I’ve been including mind maps in Freemind format. If I don’t find any showstoppers, I’ll share them using XMind from now on.

Conclusion

What I enjoy the most about Made to Stick is that Chip and Dan practice what they preach: the book is packed with great stories and examples, so it’s not only very informative but a great and fun read.

That’s probably why it became a successful, ’sticky’ hit, and has been on many “must read” book lists (like in Jack Covert’s compilation 100 most influential books of all time and many others).

If you’re interested in Made to Stick, you can get more information in the official website or buy it directly from Amazon.com.

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• What is Mind Mapping? (and How to Get Started Immediately)

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In the first part of this series, we focused on building an effective mindset for overcoming fear of failure. Now it’s time to get down to action: here are 6 powerful strategies you can use to conquer fear of failure right off the bat.

1. Acknowledge Your Fear

There’s a good reason why acknowledgement is the first step in every 12-step recovery program: we can’t fight an enemy we can’t see. Unless we can fully acknowledge our fear of failure, the psychological armor we built against it won’t be of any use.

Acknowledging our fear of failure, however, is not always easy. Many times, fear of failure comes disguised in subtle forms like anxiety, procrastination and other forms of resistance.

One great way to expose fears is plain old journaling. Another technique that works wonders is chatting with a rubber duck: many times, verbalizing your problem is all you need to clarify it.

Explore the nature of your fear: What is it that you fear about? Is it what people will say about you? What exactly are you concerned about? Try to unearth as many details as you can: the more precisely you can define the reasons behind your fear of failure the better.

2. Take a (Tiny) Step Now

Once we have acknowledged our fear of failure no other strategy beats simply taking action. Taking action and seeing results is the best motivator there is. The trick here is that we don’t need to take bold, courageous action: tiny action works just fine.

Tiny actions bypass the automatic fear response in our brains. We may get paralyzed when tackling big challenges all at once, but not when concentrating on tiny actions. And as soon as we have our first small success we start building the confidence to go on.

Small actions also serve another very important purpose: they are excellent feedback mechanisms. Each small step can be used to correct your course of action. A plane is slightly off-course most of the time, but since it continually uses its instruments’ feedback to correct its route, it’s able to get to its destination with precision.

So, think of the tiniest action step possible in your project — one that you’re absolutely sure you can accomplish — and do it now. After you’re done with that, just get to the next one… then lather, rinse, repeat. The tinier the steps, the better.

3. Reduce Uncertainty

Uncertainty is a major source of fear and anxiety. Our fear usually manifests itself because there’s at least one aspect of the challenge ahead that is unfamiliar or unknown to us.

The problem is exacerbated as we usually don’t distinguish the known parts of the problem from the unknown ones: we just mix them together into a large blob of fear and anxiety in our minds.

Getting clear about which tasks create the most uncertainty helps boost our mental energy to deal not only with those tasks, but with all tasks in the project.

Many times we tend to reassure ourselves by doing the easy tasks first and putting off the uncertain ones — and that’s fine in the beginning to help us get going — but if you keep postponing the most uncertain tasks, they will not stop haunting you and sapping your energy. So, after we get a little momentum (by taking tiny steps), the most uncertain tasks are the ones we should go after.

Make a list of tasks in your projects identifying the ones that are major sources of uncertainty and then tackle them as soon as possible.

4. Batch Ideas Before Executing Them

Have you considered that fear of failure might be a signal that you may be approaching the problem from the wrong perspective?

If that’s the case, why not have more ideas before jumping into action, then? “Any idea is a bad idea if it’s the only one you’ve got,” someone once said — and I agree.

Having no options is frightening: we start believing ’success is our only choice’. We believe that the single outcome we envisaged is the only way out, that we must get it right, or else… Obviously, the problem is in the scarcity of alternatives and the terror that this ‘all-or-nothing’ situation elicits.

The way out of this situation is to have many ideas. Lots of them — after all, quantity breeds quality. You’ll not only have plenty of alternatives to make yourself feel safer, but may also solve the problem using a much better idea than the original one.

Refuse to execute an idea if it’s the only one you’ve got. Use any one of the many idea-generation methods available — my favorites are lists of 100 and idea quotas.

5. Plan for Failure

As we discussed in part I of this article, failure is part and parcel of life. What does this mean? In a nutshell, if you are doing things right you wil fail. Often.

I roll my eyes when I see dialogue (especially in war movies) along the lines of “What’s the contingency plan?” and the reply is the clichéd “Failure is not an option here.” Guess what, no matter how important the outcome may be, failure is not only an option — but a very likely one.

Especially when we’re doing innovative work, failure is not an ‘unlikely case we should be aware of’. Quite the opposite, it’s the norm. Expect failure and be prepared for it. Instead of pretending failure won’t happen, be prepared to fail intelligently — and learn from it.

Let’s be clear: this is not the same as setting yourself for failure, but simply not getting caught by (too much) surprise when it happens.

One thing you’ll notice is that — and this may sound counterintuitive at first — when you consider failure as a likely result, your rate of success will drastically increase. You’ll think more thoroughly about your problem and become more prepared and confident.

Before jumping to action and simply hoping that you won’t fail, stop for a moment and plan for what you will do when things won’t come through as expected.

6. Redefine the Game

We all want to be successful, but have you paused for a moment to consider what ‘being successful’ really means?

I could not finish this series without mentioning that we’re free to define success in any way we want. I know this may sound iffy, but the definition of ’success’ and ‘failure’ are entirely up to you: you don’t need to adhere to any existing standards — really!

What if you measure success not by the usual notion of looking at the outcome per se but, for example, by how much fun you had along the way? What if you’re in for the learning? What about the excitement of trying new things? There are so many ways something can be successful that it’s really a pity to ignore them all and focus solely on how it can fail.

Let go of the idea that there’s only one successful outcome — and that all other alternatives, by exclusion, are failures: each outcome is successful in its own way. You may not have had the outcome you expected, but you may have learned something new about yourself. Or maybe you have developed your resilience. Or maybe you just had a good time all along.

By all means, be honest with yourself — don’t just pretend you don’t care about the outcome at all: this is not an attempt to fool yourself when you fail, but a genuine attempt to change your mindset and release yourself from the limitation of single outcomes.

Closing Thoughts

This ends this two-part series about fear of failure. As long-time Litemind reader ReddyK wisely pointed out, overcoming fear is part courage and part discernment. Hopefully, with the help from the ideas in this article (along with those in the first), you now have tools to better tackle fear of failure whatever the case may be.

Failure has become a dirty word when it shouldn’t be. Make failure your friend: unless you truly embrace failure, you will never really appreciate what it means to succeed.

Now it’s your turn: What strategies do you use to deal with fear of failure? Share in the comments!

Related Articles

• Overcome Fear of Failure, Part I — Building the Right Mindset
• Top 10 Thinking Traps Exposed — How to Foolproof Your Mind, Part II
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Does fearing failure paralyze you? Of all the reasons for inaction, the strongest one is not lack of ideas, tools, time or money. Usually, the enemy is entrenched much deeper inside our minds. Unless we learn to tackle our fear of failure, we’ll never be able to get the most out of our lives.

In this first article of a two-part series, the focus is on how to create a first line of defense — a “psychological armor” — against fear of failure. Here are 6 ideas to help you look at failure from a different perspective and stop being held back by it.

1. Failures are just steppingstones

“There is no failure. Only feedback.” –Robert Allen

We give too much importance to failure, don’t we? We overemphasize it, seeing failure as the final result — as an undesired outcome of something we fought hard for. We miss the point, though, that failure is just part of a larger process — the process of learning and growing.

Have you noticed that some people — contrary to all expectations — seem to only become stronger when they fail? How do they manage?

If you pay close attention, you’ll notice that they have developed a unique mindset: they realize that failing is an intrinsic part of succeeding. They know that every time they fail, they’re learning from their mistakes. A failure is a message that says that something could have been done differently — that there is room for improvement. And that’s why these people don’t seem to care much about failing: they never see the failure as an isolated event — but as part of a much larger process.

In life, failures are not end points: they’re steppingstones. They’re only as permanent as you allow them to be. They’re only final if you accept defeat and stop trying.

2. We can never be a failure

“Failure is an event, never a person.” – William D. Brown

At school we are ridiculed as we fail. As we grow older, the ridicule may become subtler, but it’s always present. That’s one reason fear of failure is so strong in us: failing undermines how we are recognized, accepted and validated by others.

For a long time, we’ve been conditioned to attach our sense of self-worth to the outcome of our actions. Every time one of our ideas fails, it is as though we allow our self-esteem to be eroded. We feel the failure deep inside: it’s almost like we were that idea that flopped.

But you don’t need to think that way. If something you try doesn’t work out, it doesn’t mean you are a failure or a loser. It just means you’re actively experimenting, that you’re trying, and you’re learning as a result. In that regard, the expression to be a failure (or successful) doesn’t make any sense.

If people around you don’t get that and are still critical of you or your failures, it’s probably because they are the ones who do not get the idea about experimenting, trying, and learning. But don’t let yourself down by their negativity. As long as you keep an open mind to experimenting, don’t bother if you keep failing! The people who really care about you will always support you throughout your failures. They’ll never lose sight of the person behind your failures.

3. Failing is the only way to go far enough

“If you hit every time, the target is too near or too big.” –Tom Hirshfield

The only way to know that you’ve gone far enough is to go too far. And going too far is called failing.

That means that if you don’t go far enough — in other words, if you don’t fail — you’ll never know for sure where your limits really are.

Race car drivers know this to the bone. They even have a saying for it: “The one sure way to find out if you’re going fast enough is to crash”.

So if you decide to live a life of “playing it safe” — of avoiding failures altogether — you can be safe in the knowledge that you’ll most likely accomplish your goal — after all, that’s a dead easy target to take aim at. Just bear in mind, however, that you’ll never be able to get the most out of your life acting that way.

4. Failing is part and parcel of innovation

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” –Thomas Edison

As much as I like creative idea generation, if you want to achieve marvelous things, having ideas is seldom the bottleneck. Putting them to action is!

That’s the difference between innovation and creativity: innovators are not just people having great ideas in a room, they are the ones who have the courage to go out and test them! And guess what happens when they put their ideas to action?

Exactly. They fail. Most of the time.

But every time they fail, they take note of the lessons failure taught them, improving their approach to solving the problem in subsequent attempts.

One of 20th century’s most influential books (and one of my favorites), Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, was turned down by 121 publishers before getting published. And that’s only one story of persistence in the face of failure among the many I’m sure you’ve already heard.

Consider this: If you eventually score one success, people will hardly remember your failures. So, even if you have not overcome your ego problem about failing (see point 2 above), you still have a chance: if you just keep trying and score at some point, all your mistakes will magically be gone.

5. Failing is usually not as bad as we picture it

“Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes” —Oscar Wilde

OK, failure may not be so bad after all, but would I be going too far in saying that you can actually enjoy failure?

Seriously, there were times when I was so afraid to fail that when I failed — as expected — I felt immense relief. My biggest threat had been left behind as there was nothing to fear anymore: my mind was clear again. Failing can definitely set you free.

Have you failed before? Was it as terrible as you had anticipated? Well, here you are reading this article, so it seems you survived all right. Truth is, failure is almost never as bad as we imagine. Fear of failure is usually much worse than failure itself.

Too often, people who haven’t failed at anything believe that failing is a disaster. And because they’ve never failed, they believe they know it all. They refuse to learn. Every time you fail, then, look for the lesson behind it and take it as an opportunity to grow stronger, to grow wiser — to be a better person.

6. Everybody is afraid — everybody

“Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.” –Ambrose Redmoon

Let me tell you a secret: the next guy is as scared as you are. We’re all afraid of failing. Yes, that includes even the most prolific geniuses you can think of — In fact, they seem to be the ones who agonize more about failing.”

There’s nothing wrong about it. Your fear is perfectly normal: if what you’re doing is at least minimally worth it, fear of failure will always be part of the process. It will never go away completely.

Achievers succeed not because they’re not afraid, but because they overcome fear. Every day. Over and over again. They know fear won’t go away, but they refuse to be deterred by it.

And that’s the fight worth fighting. That’s the never-ending practice we must engage on.

Final Thoughts

I first compiled the ideas in this article for my own reference. Although most of them may not be new, this is the kind of stuff I keep forgetting at the times I need them the most — and that’s why I decided to share them here. I hope you find them useful.

The 2nd part of this article is about specific strategies we can use to overcome our fear of failure: check it out!

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• Overcome Fear of Failure, Part II — 6 Powerful Strategies You Can Use
• Top 10 Thinking Traps Exposed — How to Foolproof Your Mind, Part II
• Top 10 Thinking Traps Exposed — How to Foolproof Your Mind, Part I
• Sunk Cost Bias: How It Hinders Your Life and 4 Ways to Overcome It
• Overcoming Procrastination Instantly Using Self Talk
• Overcoming Procrastination by Avoiding ‘Have To’s
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This is an article by guest writer Celestine Chua of The Personal Excellence Blog.

Do you find yourself caught in certain loops in life? Situations that keep happening which you can’t help but wonder “Not again!” or “Why me”? In this article, I’ll share a technique you can use to break out of these patterns.

For most people, whenever something negative happens, their first instinct is to brush it off as just a one-off incident or to blame the environment.

The second time it happens, they may still do the same. Third time, they may think it’s a coincidence, but it’s beginning to trigger some thought that there might be something in them that’s attracting these situations.

Fourth, fifth, sixth time… soon, it becomes clear that this has become an established pattern.

A Personal Example

Throughout my life there have been recurring patterns. For example, one dominant trend that kept emerging when I was in school was that I was almost always late for my lectures and classes. At that time I thought that it was because I lived far away from the university and I would be on time if I lived nearer.

After that, when I started working after graduation, I continued to be late — this time for work and for meetings. This time, I rationalized that it was because there were so many things to do and the schedule was too tight.

Then, when I left my corporate career last year to help others live their best life, I switched to become a full-time coach and personal development blogger. Even then, I would still continue to be late for my appointments. Since my schedule was clearly of my own making now, it became evident that I was late solely because of myself.

There was something inside me or the way I was doing things that needed to be addressed.

Examples of Common Patterns

Here are some common recurring, negative behaviors people deal with in their lives on a day-to-day basis. If any of the incidents below have happened to you at least five times, then it’s likely to be a pattern attributable to you:

• Being late for appointments
• Not meeting deadlines
• Being absent-minded
• Getting together with the “wrong” guy/girl, resulting in destructive relationships
• Sleeping late; not being able to wake up early
• Emotional eating
• Not exercising even though you planned to
• Getting into arguments or losing your temper
• Giving up halfway through whatever you’re doing
• Staying back late at work; getting burnt out

How to Break Out of Patterns

Some people’s response to these recurring behaviors is to exert external force to prevent the occurrence (i.e., through discipline). For example, if they are not exercising according to their regime, they will just whip themselves to stick to their exercise plan. If they are not sticking to their diet, they will discipline themselves to eat properly.

This usually works… for a short period of time.

The issue with this method is it requires continuous expenditure of your energy to keep up the results. As soon as the external force is removed, you start to revert to your natural habit pattern. In addition, by investing external energy to address a particular area, you are left with less energy to deal with other things in your life.

The reason why that happens is because patterns occur as a result of the internal, fundamental frameworks you live by. These frameworks refer to the inner beliefs and values you hold. To get rid of these repetitive behaviors, you need to look inward, examine what triggers them, uncover the underlying causes and resolve them at the root level. The good thing is that since patterns are a result of our beliefs, we can get out of them by changing our beliefs.

Here’s an exercise which I find very helpful in gaining clarity on the root causes of patterns then addressing them. I regularly use it for self-improvement, and it has allowed me to break out of behaviors which don’t serve me, such as being late, emotional eating and not sticking to my exercise plans. I also use this in my coaching, helping my clients successfully break out of negative patterns and accelerate toward their goals.

Before you start this exercise, write down a list of negative patterns in your life, so you can better choose the one you want to get rid of.

1. List down the past 5–10 times you have been in such a situation

Start off by picking a pattern which you want to break out of. Then, list down the past five times when you were faced with it. Five is a decent sample size which lets us compare the incidents and spot similarities between those patterns. If you like, you can even list down 10 incidents just to be exhaustive!

Let’s take my example of being late for appointments. Not being on time was one of the dominant trends in the past. Whenever I went out to meet someone, it would almost be guaranteed that I would be late for appointments. The lateness would usually range from anywhere between 5 minutes to 20 minutes, or even 30 minutes or more.

2. List down the factors for each situation that led to the outcome

Now, list down as many factors as you can that led to each incident occurring. If you have a pattern of sleeping late, write down what the reason that led you to sleep late. Maybe you had work to do, you were talking on the phone with a friend, you had insomnia, etc. It may be possible that each incident has more than one trigger, so list out as many triggers as possible.

When I examined the incidents when I was late, I found a whole list of factors such as (a) oversleeping, (b) being caught up with work before the appointment, (c) bus was late, (d) unanticipated traffic jam, (e) couldn’t find the location (the place was foreign to me) and (f) something cropped up just before the appointment.

3. Identify the commonalities across the factors

Look at all the factors you have listed. Are there any common factors across the incidents? Circle them. Chances are you will find 1-2 dominant trends across all the factors listed.

In my example, the common factor was that I was always caught up with work before the appointment. While there could have been additional factors in each case, I was almost always running late because I was engrossed in getting my work done.

4. Drill down into the cause of the factors

Now, drill into those common factors. What led to these factors? For each answer that comes up, keep digging deeper to identify the underlying cause. Keep asking “Why is this the case?” or “Why is that so?” until you hit a resonating point.

Looking into why I was getting behind, I realized it was because I wanted to finish the stuff which was supposed to have been done earlier but was not finished yet. As I looked deeper into this, I found:

• I had planned more than what was realistically achievable. I did not factor in for appropriate breaks and I had underestimated the time needed for each task.
• Instead of adhering to my work schedule, I was distracted during the work process and would be doing non-peripheral tasks instead.
• This happened because I overestimated my own capacity.
• Thus, by setting off for my appointments before I had finished my work, it meant that I wasn’t able to achieve what I had set out to do. I had let myself down by not living up to my envisioned persona. Because I didn’t want to accept that thought, I would keep working away at my tasks until I was already late beyond measure.

It is possible to have several causes behind the factors. As you work on this step, ensure you uncover as many of them as possible.

5. Identify action steps to address the cause

Now that you have uncovered the root causes, how can you address them such that they will not lead to a recurrence of the pattern in the future? Come up with action steps that will address the root causes, as well as any factors which you feel lead to the issue.

In my case, the action steps I came up with were:

• Create task lists which realistically match my current capacity.
• Place my schedule in a prominent spot so I’ll be conscious of the time and the tasks that need to be done.
• In times where I am not able to get the work done, accept that to be the case and create a separate plan to address the unfinished work later on.

As you come up with the steps, it may seem they do not address the patterns directly. For example, with my issue of being late, creating task lists may not seem like the most appropriate solution at first sight. Yet, because it addresses one of the causes (unrealistic planning), it has helped in breaking me away from the pattern. If you (a) correctly nail down the root cause(s), (b) identify the right action steps and (c) act on them, the patterns will start dissolving away in your life.

Additional Notes

• As you delve into certain patterns, you will often find that their underlying causes are one and the same. Thus, by dealing with that cause, you can get rid of many undesirable behaviors in your life in one fell swoop.
• Note that some patterns may be interlinked with others — for example, you may find that some causes can also be patterns themselves! Thus, it may not be easy to completely eradicate such patterns in one sitting. Focus on getting as much uncovered each time and progress from there. Subsequently you will come to a point where the root causes are properly addressed and the patterns are eradicated.

Try out the exercise and start breaking away from the negative patterns in your life! Feel free to give me your feedback — I’d love to know how it works for you.

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